An Israeli news source is reporting that a man suffering from the rare, but well-document Jerusalem Syndrome, jumped out of a 13-foot high walkway at the Poria Hospital in Tiberias. According to YNetNews, the 38 year old, devout Christian had arrived in Israel with his wife on a tour of various holy sites. They were both initially sent to the hospital by the tour group’s doctor.

Over the past few days the husband began feeling anxious and suffered from insomnia. He roamed the hills surrounding the guest house he was staying at, muttering about Jesus.

Dr. Taufik Abu Nasser, a senior psychiatrist at Poria, said the man underwent a series of tests in the emergency room, including a psychiatric examination and blood tests to determine whether he had used hallucinogenic drugs.

“Then at some point, after he’d calmed down, he suddenly got up and left the ward,” recalled Dr. Abu Nasser. “There’s a walkway connecting the emergency room to the other wards, and he just climbed the wall next to it and jumped from a height of over 13 feet to the ground level.”

Wikipedia’s article on Jerusalem Syndrome describes three types of the affliction. The first two categories are of people who have had some history of psychosis prior to arriving in Jerusalem. But the best known type is the third one. It describes a previously stable/mentally balanced person who becomes psychotic after arriving in Jerusalem - or another place with religious sites (in this case, the Sea of Galilee).

The psychosis is accompanied by an intense religious experience, and often a personification of a religious character (the messiah, John the Baptist, Mohammed, etc.). Many times sufferers believe that they have been personally called by God, and are in conversation with Him.

Wikipedia lists a distinct pattern of behaviors:
1. Anxiety, agitation, nervousness and tension, plus other unspecified reactions.

2. Declaration of the desire to split away from the group or the family and to tour Jerusalem alone. Tourist guides aware of the Jerusalem syndrome and of the significance of such declarations may at this point refer the tourist to an institution for psychiatric evaluation in an attempt to preempt the subsequent stages of the syndrome. If unattended, these stages are usually unavoidable.

3. A need to be clean and pure: obsession with taking baths and showers; compulsive fingernail and toenail cutting.

4. Preparation, often with the aid of hotel bed-linen, of a long, ankle-length, toga-like gown, which is always white.

5. The need to shout psalms or verses from the Bible, or to loudly sing religious hymns or spirituals. Manifestations of this type serve as a warning to hotel personnel and tourist guides, who should then attempt to have the tourist taken for professional treatment. Failing this, the two last stages will develop.

6. A procession or march to one of Jerusalem’s holy places.

7. Delivery of a ‘sermon’ in a holy place. The sermon is usually very confused and based on a plea to humankind to adopt a more wholesome, moral, simple way of life.

The pattern is bizarrely familiar from case to case. And those who work in the tourist industry (hotel workers, tour guides, bus drivers, etc.) know to watch for it. Until you experience it (or read about someone who did), it sounds....almost silly, perhaps childish. Someone being so moved by a visit to a religious site that they think they are God (or another religious figure)? Yet, it is very real and happens with a surprisingly alarming rate. According to the SavyTraveler, in 1999, fifty people were diagnosed with it! [They also note that in a typical year, Israel sees 3 or 4 of these cases - and perhaps the increase in 1999 was related to the approach of the millenium.]